Duffin's
work is meticulously scholarly. She is both a fine historian and a top
level medical researcher. She began her quest to investigate the secret
arches of the Vatican regarding their saint making miracles and the
records for healing in 1986. At that time someone brought her some
medical records of a woman with Lukemia. She assumed the woman must be
dead as the records shows the Leukemia was in advanced stages. She was
amazed to find the woman was alive and perfectly well. She then learned
that her diagnosis was part of the validation process for the Vatican in
a saint making miracle. She had not been told until after the diagnosis
what it was about. Years latter the saint was canonized she was invited
to ceremony and when she realized her work would be in the secret
Vatican archives forever she began seeking permission to examine their
records of healing.

The resulting book, published so
many years latter (1986 when she first examined the medical x rays to
2009 when the book was punished) is a scholarly work of the highest
caliber. It is not an apologetics book. She does comment in the work
that she believes in miracles, but she says what she believes in more
than miracles is the honesty of the doctors and witnesses involved int
he process. What the reader will not come away with in reading this book
is some hackney cheapo apologetically argument about "miracles are
proved therefore God is proved." this is nothing of the sort. This book
could have been read in my Ph.D. work in secular university and not been
rejected as scholarly. What the reader does get is an answer the
mocking atheists who assert with bigotry and boldness that anyone who
believes in miracles is an idiot and dupe and that the doctoral "work
the Vatican" they are just trying to get more miracles. That's obviously
silly if all they wanted was lots of miracles they wouldn't have such
rigid rules and they would not have so few miracles. She voices a real
confidence in the doctors and one can see why becuase she documents
their total skepticism. Even the doctors working in the Vatican process
are not just eager miracles mongers they re scrupulosity skeptical of
all claims. That's the major thing a reader will take away from the
book.

Duffin examines 1,400 miracles from the middle
ages to modern times. This is not the full number. There's a huge
archive with lots more where those came from. These are not Lourdes
miracles they are miracles involved with saint making. Although, they
use the same committee and the same rules. One of the most surprising
things she shows is that the miracles go through cycles. That's not so
amazing if you think about it. One major reason is the awareness of
medicine and diseases improves over time and that changes our
understanding of what peopl eight be healed from. For example
tuberculosis and leukemia didn't exist int he middle ages, not as thing
of which we were consciously aware. So if someone was weak and sick and
got better they might say she was held of "weakness" or something like
that then she could die a couple of years latter of some unknown cause
which would be written off as "fever." That would be listed as "healing
for weakness" a miracle whereas she goes on to die of Leukemia.

This
is a problem and it's a reason for the modern debacle with the medical
committee being on strike. The Vatican wants lower the standards. The
researchers are totally against it. Even without that problem there's
another in terms of better diagnostics. As we become more aware and
more able to cure there are fewer people who have not been treated by
modern medicine more awareness of natural healing. It's not going to
turn out that all the former miracles are mistakes of diagnosis. There
are some can't be explained. There many resurrections form the dead, not
two are three, but a whole huge body of work on the subject, hundreds
of resurrections. Of course early ones can be suspected because they
might have been in a coma. It's not that cut and dried when a person is
dead. There are latter ones as well. There are also overnight miracles
such as Charles Anne's lungs growing back over night. That's not a problem of diagnosis becuase no process can grow new lungs in people overnight.

The
book is written in a scholarly fashion, although accessible to the
layman. It has a welth of information in the form of charts, graphs, and
tables. It traces the rise and decline of various miracles as their
diseases become medically known or forgotten. No healing from "Dropsy"
becuase it's not considered a disease anymore. One has to like this kind
of writing, but it doesn't go into detail on grotesque aspects. This is
a great book, this is the documentation for modern miracles we have
been waiting for. Although it is only scratching the surface of
investigation in the wealth of documents at the Vatican archives, all
all ground breaking works it does get the ground turned up.

*from Bio on Amazon.com

Jacalyn Duffin, M.D. (Toronto 1974), FRCP(C) (1979), Ph.D. (Sorbonne
1985), is Professor in the Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at
Queen's University in Kingston where she has taught in medicine,
philosophy, history, and law for more than twenty years.
A
practicing hematologist, a historian, a mother and grandmother, she has
served as President of both the American Association for the History of
Medicine and the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine. She holds
a number of awards and honours for research, writing, service, and
teaching.
She is the author of five books, editor of two
anthologies, and has published many research articles. Her most recent
book is an analysis of the medical aspects of canonization, Medical
Miracles; Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World, Oxford
University Press, 2009. It was awarded the Hannah Medal of the Royal
Society of Canada...

see also:

The Miracles: A Doctor says "Yes"by Richard H. Casdorph.(Logos International, 1976)this is not a scholarly source. It's a popular source written by a doctor that does present medical evidence.

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